As most of you know, Dave Lukasik put a post on the list inviting us all to the 27th Annual Hi-Desert Roundup. Our small group already had plans to go to Los Coyotes Indian Reservation for Memorial Day Weekend. Somehow, someone in our group decided we needed to go the Hi-Dez thingy instead. We let the usual listers we go with know and we were on our way. Bud Boren as usual is first on the road and to the event. Brad Kilby and his buddy Mike (aka Four X Doctor) show sometime shortly after on Thursday evening. All three are in behemoth motorhomes (relevant in just a sec). Steve McKay heads out at 6:00am on Friday morning and I have no idea what time he arrived. My group, are in route an hour or so later than planned but in route by 3:00pm. Memorial Day weekend, Friday evening, Southern California. Can anyone tell where I'm heading here? Yeah, nowhere frig'n fast. At the breakneck speed of roughly 20mph average, we make it within radio contact at 8:00pm. Five damn hours! Bud catches us on the radio and comes out to meet us on the road and guide us in. One thing about Bud, he'll go the extra mile to get you to camp. The tricycle story originates with him coming out to the main road to guide us in. In fact, Bud made us all sit on the road to wait for Brad the first time we met him. Uh..oops, back to the story. Mark Alligood, Mike (the new sheriff in town) Radovich and myself pull in to a nice warm fire waiting for us, NOT! Instead, there's a fire pit. And for effect there's a lantern in the pit. The newly arriving group is immediately assaulted for wood. Sorry guys, Bill Duty and his son are both arriving soon in trucks and are bringing a load in. Now you would think (here's the motorhome part) that three guys all in beautiful spacious motorhomes towing argueably the bitchenest three Jeeps at the event could bring a couple of logs. Nope, not even a stick! I fight off the heathens as they make attempts at my blocks for leveling the camper. Another hour or two and Bill, his boy and Donald Clark arrive with wood and my blocks are safe.
If I may sidetrack just a bit here to the Hammers, I remember when Steve Friend showed up in his behemoth, he brought out a large plastic trashcan to the fire. Dumped the wood out it was carrying and let the entire camp use this as a community dump. When he left, he loaded up the can full of (more than his share of) trash and hauled it out. (Now I'm picturing the entire list shaking their heads, and imagining the heartache I'll suffer from Bud when he reads this! People call you what?)
MsVicky and I head over to registration and Dave Lukasik steps up to see if he can't disqualify me from the event. Luckily I have all the equipment and MsVicky there for the sweet talking so Dave reluctantly places a sticker on my windshield. One thing on this inspection, they don't ask for anything you shouldn't already have in your Jeep. In fact, I would pass the inspection in route to the local shopping center (MsVicky cuts in, "Yeah right, as if I could get you to go to the store!). Uhem, so like I was saying, make sure even on your local just gonna go mess around with your buddies in the dirt kind of run, have this basic equipment at a minimum.
The next morning we all get up bright and early (ha!) and head out to do our thing. We find the Acky Breaky trail and dive in. Just a few hours earlier, the official run started through here with probably 100 Jeeps or more, I ain't sure. We come across vehicles now and then but basically are free to explore the trail pretty much without any holdups. The reason for choosing this trail was we had a stock CJ with and it's the only trail we were aware of that had bypasses on the hard stuff. Although, Mike really showed us all by navigating his stock CJ through some of the red areas with some pretty tough rock crawling without incident (excluding the loud banging of metal ofcourse). We ventured on the trail taking all the red routes as we came across them. Eventually we came up to the main group of the organized ride sitting at a dead stop and decided we'd cut loose from this and head back to camp. Once we wet our whistles we headed over to vendor row to see what was there. Bud, one hell of a nice guy, picks up a set of Oasis tire deflators and gives them to Bill for his birthday. Really made my $20 gift certificate at Harbor Freight look cheesey. Oh well, so Donald buys a set too and MsVicky falls for the pouty lip and gets me a set too. The guys says "they're already set for 15lbs" and I reply, "let me see" (since he's got an apparatus for checking them there). Well, not one of the four deflators was set to 15lbs. So they adjusted them and told me to get lost. Later Bill Cue stopped by to rattle Bud's cage and flaunt his damageless day once again.
The next day...(here comes the good stuff)
The Sheriff (aka Mike) has to get back to work that evening so he packs up. While saying his goodbyes another sheriff in a Bronco rolls through the area and he yells "Hey, there goes one of them communists!" Bud's campfire entertainment the night before obviously had no impact. The Sheriff heads out and the rest of us sporatically head out to the game area to spectate. While in route Mike calls over the CB that he's overheating and is on the road just beyond the game area. Bill and myself head over to assist. While dumping about 2.5 gallons of water into his radiator, Mike decides to dig one of his water jugs out and Bill and I will fill it for the trip home. That plan is foiled when one of the lifting cables on his tent trailer breaks. We refilled my water can, gave it to Mike for the trip home, wished him well and headed back to the game area. MsVicky and I barely got out of the Jeep and the gang had new plans. Back to camp, aired up and now we were all headed for the Calico mines. Some ghost town and "radical trails" were supposed to be there. We arrived at the entrance to the ghost town to learn the entrance fee was $6. The bunch of cheapskates that we are, we all quickly did u-turns and headed back to the main road. Steve McKay's CJ had developed an engine problem that required some YJ parts and YJ tools, then we got on our way again. The FourX Doctor (Mike) lead us into a canyon where things quickly turned nasty. Donald in his SOA YJ went up the waterfall first, followed by Brad's 35" treaded TJ, then Bud's 4.2 trillion dollar CJ went up then I decided to take a shot at it. It was very quickly revealed that I do not have enough lift. Most of you know I've been waffling over the SOA deal. You wouldn't believe how many times I've changed my mind, and it's driving my friends nuts. Usually, when I'm parked next to my buddies on the street, I want an SOA. Once we get back from a trail ride, I don't want an SOA cause the Jeep just performed superbly. Well after I had to back down from the waterfall, Bill walks up with a huge grin and says, "Is this a springover moment? Ha! Ha! Ha!" Well I got out of the way and Mark in his SOA YJ went up then Mike in his Dana44 front, Dana60 rear, 35" mean machine go up like it's a walk in the park. So obviously, our group is split here. All the big dogs at the top of the waterfall and us weenies at the bottom (very sad indeed). Bud says something about more lift and more...well nevermind.
Bill, Steve and I go on to try to find another way around. We come across another route and make our way in and across some really cool wheeling. Obviously not too tough, it was just us weenies. We finally made our way into the open and got into a wash that led to a graded road. It had been several hours since the group split up and none of us knew anything about the area so we decided we should try to make our way to the pavement. As we made our way along, we made radio contact with the rest of the group. We managed to all hook up on top of a hill and decided on lunch. I had a huge helping of humble pie.
It was clear that nobody knew the way out. I knew which direction we needed to head and we were on a graded road. Seemed simple right? Well, after much confusion over the radio, we split up. Yeah, we split up into two groups. Donald and Mike went back the way they came and were going down the waterfall. The rest of us decided on another route. We followed it around a hill until it came to some nasty downhill rock crawl'n. Brad headed down, then Bud, then me. Maybe 30 yards down Pokey developed a temper and decided to vapor lock. While we waited for Pokey to end his tantrum Brad continued on. Bud asked "How's it go'n Brad?" to which he replied "uh..oh...I just bottomed out..uh I just bottomed out again." Hmmm..that scared off Mark, Bill and Steve and they turned around and headed out for new frontiers. Bud and I waited until we heard Brad say he had hit good road and was in route to hook up with Donald and Mike and go down the waterfall.
Once Pokey's fit was over Bud and I turned around for our own misadventure. We headed down a road that was surely an exit. Off we went slowing down only for the worst. We turned towards the southwest when the options came knowing that was the general direction for the pavement. At one point speeding along, I could see a drop off ahead. I couldn't tell how far but I was sure the trail went on because this was damn near a graded road. I decided I better hop out and just see if it was anything to worry about. Oh man was it a drop off. Two 90 degree drop offs. The first, maybe 20 feet. The second, Bud says 100ft, I say 1000. In any case, a long way down. Well, we whip around and head for our last Y junction and took the "other" option. Eventually we came across a dead end, or so Bud says. So around we go again and we're headed for the option before the "other" option. As we're mosy'n along (not panicked mind you, because as MsVicky said "We won't starve, we got pretzels and beer!", we come across a Toy 4Runner by himself. We ask if he knows the quickest way out and he says follow him, his brakeline is broken and he's headed straight out. We start to turn around but Pokey is having another temper tantrum and won't run. So, the 4Runner dude says no problem he'll wait. MsVicky points out to me these 3 fellows in the 4Runner look suspicously friendly. "Huh? Oh, I see" as she points out earrings in the right ear (Well, is that thing about earrings in the right ear true or not?). Anyway, fags or not, they're my buddies right now! Bud finally convinces Pokey to move along only to stall almost immediately again. I run up and ask the gay, I mean guy, if he could just tell me how to get out. He says it's pretty complicated and he'll wait. Bud tells me go ahead with him, then come back and get me. Okee Dokee...so I start following. As we make turns I report them back to Bud and eventually he's moving and catches up with us. We wind up on Ft. Irwin road and head back to the highway to get to camp. Upon arrival in camp everyone shared stories and agreed the day was a total success. The only other casualty was Steve blowing two tires on the same rock. Hey, don't ask me, I wasn't there.
That night was the raffle, we heckled and drank a lot!
There are a lot of clubs that help put a lot of effort towards pulling off this event. In comparing this to the Tierra Del Sol (TDS) Desert Safari I'd say the trails are probably better at Hi-Dez, but the Hi-Dez giveaways don't even come close to TDS Desert Safari. The vendors really don't come through on this one. The vendor attendance is comparably low. The Hi-Dez raffle runs kind of slow and gets pretty boring believe it or not. There were a few good prizes to be had, like two 9k winches, a loc-right, boulder bars from Four X Doctor and get this, they gave away two sets of two BFG tires. Not one set of four, two sets of two! Probably the "freebie" that I would consider most sinister would have been the $25 gift certificate from Marlin Crawler. They gave away lots of jerky too. The only winner in our camp won, door entry sill guards. We have yet to figure out what kind of vehicle they fit. They're not CJ/YJ/TJ though and that's all that was in our camp. He also got a Goodwrench shirt, a free registration to a poker run put on by the Pt. Magu 4WD club, a $25 gift certificate from Olympic 4WD Parts AND two tire guages!
I can't say that at anytime during this whole long weekend that I had anything but a good time. There's nothing better than getting out with a bunch of good friends and participating in such a cool sport. It may seem sometimes like this bunch of Yahoos in SOCAL are really just a bunch of idiots. But you're wrong, it's not just sometimes! What a blast! Oh, and if you're curious about the title of this report, ask Brad.
Love'n every minute!
